Jennifer Iverson presented a paper, “Preparing Electronic Music” at the national meeting of the Society for Music Theory in St. Louis. The paper explored the reception of John Cage‘s prepared piano music in West Germany between 1952-54. Before the aleatory debates of the later 1950s, Cage’s prepared piano had a profound effect on both the sound and the temporal structure of early WDR electronic music.

Kelsey McGinnis

Kelsey McGinnis, a PhD student in musicology, gave a presentation titled “Intersections: Music, Human Rights, and Cultural Diplomacy in an Iowa POW Camp” at the International Symposium on Cultural Diplomacy in the United Nations. The conference was hosted at the United Nations headquarters and other UN consulates in New York, bringing together academic and political professionals. Kelsey presented her work on the musical activities of German POWs in Iowa during WWII as a case study in the history of U.S. cultural diplomacy.